They say you can see the world in a grain of sand.
In some cases, you can indeed view a global shift in ideology through the lens of a single incident. Take British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s recent response to a Palestinian family who came to the UK using a refugee scheme designed for Ukrainians.
Starmer was outraged. He went so far as to unreservedly agree with Tory leader Kemi Badenoch when she raised the case in the Commons. Prime ministers almost never give opposition leaders this kind of unqualified endorsement at the dispatch box.
Both Starmer and Badenoch were criticising the judge who upheld the Palestinians’ case. For this attack on the judiciary, the chief justice, Baroness Sue Carr, slapped them both down, saying such criticism undermined the independence of the courts.
If Starmer and Badenoch had a problem, they could launch an appeal as the proper route to redress, rather than publicly criticising a judge unable to answer back, Carr told them.
And in this grain of sand, we can see the collapse of an entire social democratic/liberal ideology. Core elements of this ideology are meant to include equity and impartiality, the application of the rule of law without fear or favour, and the defence of a rules-based international order.
Starmer reacted to the case of the Palestinian refugees in a manner that undermined the code that he – a human rights lawyer, as he never tires of reminding us – is supposed to uphold.
It should not matter whether refugees are Ukrainians or Palestinians. If they stand in need of support as defined in the law, they should be entitled to receive it. But Starmer chose to make his judgement on the basis of political preference, not on the basis of need or equal treatment before the law.
Starmer favours Ukraine in its war with Russia, and he does not favour the Palestinian people in their struggle against the state of Israel. This is the measure that he applied in this case: when the court ruled that the Palestinian family should be treated in the same way as Ukrainian refugees, he attacked the court.
It is a cornerstone of parliamentary democracy that there is a separation of powers between the executive and the judiciary.
Starmer politicised this case and ignored that distinction. This is precisely why the chief justice responded so strongly and publicly to his and Badenoch’s attack on the court’s decision.
What is astounding about all of this is that the foundational precept of social democratic and liberal attacks on Trumpism, and on the far right in general, is their politicisation of the normal legal functions of parliamentary democracy.
US President Donald Trump’s partisan appointments to vacant positions at the top of the American judicial system, highly political sackingsin the defence establishment, and contestation of election results by court action, are all held up as examples of his ostensibly unique contempt for the division of powers enshrined in the American constitution, and his determination to bend the state apparatus not merely to the will of the ruling elite (as has always been true), but to his own specific will.
Starmer’s attack on the court’s decision in the case of the Palestinian refugees shows that he is equally willing to dispense with due process, and with the separation of powers, to pursue his own narrow political ends.
The tragedy of the social democratic and liberal political centre is that Starmer’s move in this case is not an isolated failing.
Trump’s ‘drain the swamp’ rhetoric is effective precisely because the old liberal elite are widely seen as corrupt by many American voters.
In Britain, the rapid decline in Starmer’s popularity is precisely because he is seen as almost identical to the discredited and corrupt Johnsonite Tory party, which took control of government after the Brexit referendum.
This picture can only be enhanced by Starmer’s complete willingness to prostrate himself at the feet of Trump, no matter how completely the US president rips up the social democratic and liberal consensus that has dominated establishment thinking since the Second World War.
Indeed, the more the populist right exploits the failures of the old liberal centre, the more the old liberal centre adapts to the populist right by shadowing their political stances.
In this way, a “doom loop” opens up: the liberal centre fails the mass of the population, the far right gains, the far right fails, the liberal centre regains power and fails again, and the far right populists return in ever-more dangerous forms.
This is precisely the Obama-Trump-Biden-Trump cycle that we see in the US. But it is by no means limited to the US.
The isolation and collapse of the liberal and social democratic centre is accelerated by the fact that they are more opposed to the radical left than to the populist right. Put simply, Starmer still hates former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn more than he hates Trump.
And yet, it is precisely this radical left that has the best chance of defeating Trump and the populist right more generally.
Trump’s tariff mania will not create jobs, as Trump has told his voter base that it will; rather, it will damage the US economy. In the short term, it will immediately drive up prices, making working-class Americans poorer than they already are.
To the extent that these measures are adopted internationally, and that is already extensively the case, it will have a depressive effect on the global economy, just as similar tariff wars did in the 1920s.
Trump’s politicisation of state machinery will erode civil liberties and constitutional freedoms, undermining the populist right’s claims to defend free speech and liberty in general.
In international affairs, Trump’s aggressive isolationism may end wars that he regards as unwinnable, like the conflict in Ukraine, but it will not produce a more peaceful or stable world.
In these circumstances, a radical left prepared to argue for workers’ rights and an economy that guarantees stable and secure jobs; which pledges to end the erosion of real wages, and to rebuild health and education systems; which vows to revitalise transport infrastructure, and to defend freedom of assembly, free speech and effective trade union organisation; and which commits to pursuing peace rather than war in international arenas, is the best effective antidote to the far right.
It would be encouraging if at least some of those in the collapsing liberal/social democratic centre were to join with this project, rather than constantly stampeding to the right in hopes of reaching accommodation with Trump and his international co-ideologues.
Source: Middle East Eye